SPINOZA: 1677 AND 1877. 223 



noza, the fellow-founder with Richard Simon of Biblical exegesis, was 

 not he the precursor of those liberal theologians who have in our own 

 day shown that Christianity can retain all its glory without supei'- 

 naturalism? His letters to Oldenburg on the resurrection of Jesus 

 Christ, and of the manner in which St. Paul understood it, are mas- 

 terpieces which a hundred years later would have served as the mani- 

 festo of a whole school of critical theology. 



In the eyes of Spinoza it signifies little whether mysteries be 

 understood this way or that, provided they be understood in a pious 

 sense. Religion has one aim only, piety ; and we are to appeal to it 

 not for metaphysics, but for practical guidance. At bottom there is 

 but one single thing in Scripture, as in all revelation : " Love your 

 neighbor." The fruit of religion is blessedness, each one participat- 

 ing in it according to his capacity and his efforts. The souls that are 

 governed by reason the philosophic souls that have, even in this 

 world, their life in God are safe from death; what death takes from 

 them is of no value ; but weak or passionate souls perish almost 

 entirely, and death, instead of being for them a simple accident, 

 involves the foundation of their being. . . . The ignorant man who 

 lets himself be swayed by blind passions is agitated in a thousand 

 different directions by external causes, and never enjoys true peace of 

 soul ; for him, ceasing to suffer means ceasing to be. The soul of the 

 wise man, on the other hand, can scarcely be troubled. Possessing 

 by a kind of eternal necessity the consciousness of itself and of God 

 and of things, he never ceases to be, and ever preserves the soul's 

 true peace. 



Spinoza could not endure his system to be considered irreligious or 

 subversive. The timid Oldenburg did not conceal from him that some 

 of his opinions seemed to certain readers to tend to the overthrow of 

 piety. " Whatever accords with reason," replied Spinoza, " is in my 

 belief most favorable to the practice of virtue." The pretended supe- 

 riority of coarsely positive conceptions as to religion and a future life 

 found him intractable. *' Is it, I ask, to cast off religion," he was 

 wont to say, " to acknowledge God as the Supreme Good, and thence 

 to conclude that he must be loved with a free soul ? To maintain 

 that all our felicity and most perfect freedom consists in that love 

 that tlie reward of virtue is virtue, and that a blind and impotent 

 soul finds its punishment in its blindness is this a denial of all re- 

 ligion?" At the root of all such attacks he traced meanness of soul. 

 According to him, any one who felt irritated by a disinterested relig- 

 ion involuntarily confessed reason and virtue to have no charm in his 

 eyes, and that his pleasure would lie in living to indulge his passions 

 if he were not restrained by fear. "Thus, then," he would add, 

 " such a one only abstains from evil and obeys the Divine command- 

 ment regretfully as a slave, and in return for this slavery expects from 

 God rewards which have infinitely more value in his eyes than the 



